Stony Brook University SUNY Korea

SUNY Korea FIT graduating students had an Opening Ceremony for their AAS (Associate in Applied Science) exhibition on June 11th . The graduating student exhibition features the works of fourteen graduating students from the Fashion Design Department.   President Wonki Min gave congratulatory remarks for the graduating Fashion Design students. Following on from that, FIT professors Leonard Bess and Koo Bonkuk gave congratulatory speeches for the students during the event.     The students’ works of beautifully-made garments, which were displayed at the Hyundai Premium Outlet on June 5th, will be presented at the SUNY Korea Museum from June 14th to June 18th. The clothes reflect the inspiration from the historical clothing from 1920 to 1970 combined with the new trend of floral trace and sweet romance.   We send our sincere congratulations to the graduating FIT students for their splendid works of art!

A research paper written by DTS undergraduate students, Tae-Yun Kim, Soo-min Kim, Tae-woong Yoon, and Do-hyun Oh under Professor Neal Dreamson’s supervision, has been published in an academic journal, Korean Journal of Converging Humanities (Volume 9, Issue 2, page 1-22). Korean Journal of Converging Humanities is a journal registered on KCI (Korea Citation Index), published on a quarterly basis. The paper was an outcome from their study in a course, EST 441 Interdisciplinary Senior Project, Fall 2020.      In the paper, the team critically reviews the concepts of smart cities and human smart cities using three well-known smart cities’ plans including Barcelona, Dubai, and Singapore. The team discovers that the plans contain anti-humanism and anti-non-humanism (or anthropocentrism). The team argues for three posthumanist dimensions: non-dualism, more-than-humans, and ecological community to make smart cities free from anthropocentrism. The team develops a conceptual framework for post-humanist smart cities to ensure that the next generation of smart cities becomes inclusive of all humans, non-humans, and more-than-humans.     Below are the testimonial statements of the students.     Tae Yun: The production of this research paper enables me to have a new perspective on technology that coexists with the present society we live in. Defining the right use of a city and technology from a different (and whole new) perspective was the biggest challenge but, at the same time, was the biggest harvest of learning.     Soomin: I had been interested in policies regarding Smart Cities, and this opportunity helped me open up new perspectives towards the topic. I'm happy to see our paper got published in the academic journal as an extension of the college course. I was thankful to work with a great team and learn deeply about the research process.     Taewoong: I have learned a lot academically in the process of writing this research paper, and I deeply felt that there were things I needed to study more after all. I sincerely thank Professor Neal Dreamson. Prof. Dreamson has given us a lot of feedback. I also appreciate our team members, who have always commented on revising and supplementing with meticulousness.     Dohyun: What I gained from this paper is that I learned the proper way of critical review. A critical review is not just criticizing a topic but continuously questioning and evaluating a topic.        

SUNY Korea FIT had a fashion show at the Songdo Hyundai Premium Outlet on June 5th. With “Nostalgia” as the theme, the show demonstrated the works of FIT Fashion Design students from NDGC (Natural Dye Garden Club).      FIT students not only designed the works, but also participated as the models during the show.     Exhibition of students’ works, Natural Dye Workshop, MSC's fashion merchandise, IVY’s fashion magazine, and admission booths were also set up during the event.   We truly appreciate the hard work of our FIT students and the coaching of FIT faculty members for such spectacular fashion works!      *Related article: Click here 

Two Computer Science students and Professor Youngmin Kwon in one team developed a data processing technology concerning training AI applications with image classification. This new technology is unlike the AI models in general which need completed decoded images for classification, and has been registered at the Korean Intellectual Property Office.       Saving time and memory space, this technology is even expected to save peoples’ lives if it assists the safety device as an auxiliary method.     Below is the team member Yousun’s written interview!         1. Please introduce yourself and your team members.     Hi. I am Yousun, a Ph.D. student in the CS department of the IoT lab. The two members of my team are my advisor, Prof. Youngmin Kwon, and another Ph.D. student, Jay, who graduated last Feb.       2. Could you explain briefly about this newly developed data processing that has been registered at the Korean Intellectual Property Office?     There is a study field of image classification in AI applications. The idea we developed is training an AI model with not fully decoded images. In general, pictures for AI training are completely decoded, but it is also likely to be trained as a deep learning model if we feed intermediate data taken from the decoding process.     The word ‘frequency’ is also used not just for radio waves, but pictures too. Image pixels are arranged in frequency ascending order while it’s in the encoding and decoding stage, and we take intermediate data from this stage.     Then the high-frequency parts are discarded because it is enough to train a model with the remaining parts if training targets are lumps of features. To do so, training data can be reduced up to one-fourth from the original size. It helps to save training time as well as memory space requirements.       3. How do you think this new technology will help people in general?     It requires fewer parameters of an AI model than using general pictures, therefore, the classification time is also fast with the same hardware. That small time gap is important to prevent the car accident of autonomous vehicles moving at high speed. If it assists the safety device as an auxiliary method, it will be helpful to save lots of lives.       4. Tell us about some difficulties or challenges your team faced while working together.     The first challenge was to design and implement an image decoder that can freely handle all sub-processes for decoding. We read lots of books about image processing and lecture notes.     Another difficulty was finding the best model for learning our outputs and repeated parameter tunings for each model. This is because it takes a long time to train the model, even if the input data has a small data size.       5. What did you learn from this experience?     One big lesson that I felt, and I would like to say to other students, is ‘You have to believe in what you think with confidence’. It would have never been invented if we ignored it as a trivial idea, and we would have given up without doing our best.    

SALI 360, a technology developed by CS Professor Jihoon Ryoo and two SUNY Korea students, Duin Baek and Hangil Kang, has recently been registered at the Korean Intellectual Property Office.     The technology was developed in 2019, out of the need that the currently available bandwidth in most of the developed countries can hardly support the bandwidth required to stream a large scale of contents like the 360°contents .     As an apparatus and method for encoding and decoding virtual reality image, SALI 360 improves perception quality while reducing the contents size to serve the streaming service on the current network platform.     By utilizing the characteristics of the human vision system (HVS), it solves the mismatch between the demand on higher quality of streaming services and the current network platform.     Related article: Click here  YouTube Video: Click here  

SUNY Korea Student Services Team and RA (Resident Assistant) Pop-Up Committee collaborated on SUNY Korea Appreciation Event & Thanksgiving in June.     * Appreciation Week The Appreciation Week Event started on May 31 and ended on June 2. This event was to bring together the SUNY Korea Community and share what we appreciate and are thankful for. The visitors (students, faculty and staff) filled out a sticky note and pasted it on a shared board. The people who completed a note received a small goodie bag as a gift of appreciation.     * Thanksgiving in June RA (Resident Assistant) Pop-Up Committee designed the event to provide students an opportunity to show respect and appreciation to their friends in the SUNY Korea community. SUNY Korea residents wrote thank you notes to their friends that they would like to appreciate. RAs sent the notes and a package to the recipient on behalf of the school.     The packages were issued on June 2nd under the Bill Hwang Library to promote social distancing. During campus lifetime, the RAs played requested music and displayed the colorful thank you notes on a huge poster while giving an opportunity to anyone who had not participated to write a thankful note and get a package.      Student Services Team and RA Pop-Up Committee made the events inclusive by encouraging all  people on-campus and off- campus were able to participate including students, faculty, and staff.

Dear Spring 2021 / Summer 2021 Graduation Candidates,     SUNY Korea congratulates our seniors for their achievements and upcoming graduation. We will come together to celebrate the commencement of the Class of Spring 2021 and confer the hard-earned degrees on Friday, June 18 at 15:00 p.m. KST.    This special tribute to the graduating class includes remarks from Dr. Wonki Min (President of SUNY Korea), Dr. Maurie McInnis (President of SBU), Dr. Joyce Brown (President of FIT), and Dr. Myung Oh (The Founder and Honorary President of SUNY Korea).        This year, SUNY Korea is holding the ceremony in person only for RSVP'd graduation candidates under strict COVID prevention measures. The ceremony will also be live-streamed via SUNY Korea's YouTube channel. RSVP'd students may accompany guests to the event, where guests will be able to watch the live-streamed ceremony in separate rooms.         You can access the Live-streaming on SUNY Korea’s official YouTube channel.  ※ Please subscribe to our channel to receive an alarm for the commencement.     ■ Date & Time: Friday, June 18 at 15:00 pm (KST)               ※ Click here to watch last year’s commencement

Members from the U.S. Embassy visited SUNY Korea on June 8th.   Anneliese Reinemeyer, Minister Counselor for Public Affairs, Anna Dupont, Director of Exchanges and Alumni and Maria Choi, Cultural Affairs Specialist, had a meeting with President Wonki Min.       During the meeting, the need for cooperation and networking between SUNY Korea, an American University, and the U.S. Embassy was brought up.   A campus tour was provided for the visitors afterwards.       As SUNY Korea offers the degrees and identical programs of two American universities (Stony Brook University and FIT), SUNY Korea will do our best to play the role of providing authentic higher American education in Songdo, South Korea.

It is an undeniable fact that the role of mechanical engineering is continuously growing in the era of the Fourth Industrial Revolution through new technologies such as AI.   To meet the needs of such a time, Hamid Hefazi, professor and chair of the Mechanical Engineering Department, contributed in publishing the second edition of the Springer Handbook of Mechanical Engineering as a chapter author and also an editor. This book “provide[s] a valuable guide for all who design, develop, manufacture, operate, and use mechanical artifacts,” and “senior students can use it as a resource for their senior design or other projects”. Students can borrow the copy of this book at the MEC Department!        Below is Professor Hefazi’s written interview:       [Interview Questions] 1  1) Please introduce yourself.  I am a professor and the Chair of the Mechanical Engineering Department at the State University of New York (SUNY) – Korea. I received my PhD in Aerospace Engineering from the University of Southern California (USC) in 1985. After working for the McDonnel Douglas Corporation in Long Beach, California for a while, I joined the California State University, Long Beach (CSULB) as a professor and department head, and worked there until 2013.       Prior to joining SUNY Korea I was the Head of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering (MAE) department at California State University for 12 years and Florida Institute of Technology for 6 years. For more than 35 years, I have been teaching and conducting research on many mechanical and aerospace engineering topics for agencies such as NASA, the Boeing Company, Northrop Grumman Space Technology and the US Office of Naval Research among others. I served as the director of the “Boeing Technology Centre” at CSULB for 12 years.         I also have an interest in sailing and ship design and served as consultant for Prada 2000 and 2003 America's Cup Challenges in the areas of keel hull and sail performance for race boats. I also have worked extensively as a consultant for wind-energy companies on wind turbine design and have two US patents for Vertical Axis Wind Turbines.       2  2) Could you explain what Mechanical Engineering is to non-ME majors? Mechanical Engineering (ME) is the most popular engineering major in many industrially advanced countries such as Korea.  It is a foundational engineering discipline, which integrates core engineering sciences with other fields such as computer aided design (CAD), electronics and computer sciences, computer aided manufacturing (CAM), 3D printing, and experimentation, into a dynamic interdisciplinary field. Among various engineering disciplines, ME represents a good balance between theory and practical skills such as design, creativity experimentation, manufacturing skills, etc.       Looking ahead, the role of mechanical engineering is expected to substantially grow in the era of the Fourth Industrial Revolution (4RI), through new technologies such as robotics and automation, autonomous systems, sustainable energy, advanced transportation systems, smart materials, bio medical and space technologies, as well as demand for the manufacturing of new generation electronics and AI platforms, to name a few. All of these open new horizons for exciting careers in mechanical engineering.          3) Could you briefly explain what this book is about? This book is published by Springer Nature Switzerland AG, which is a publishing company headquartered in Cham, Switzerland. It is an essential resource for scientists and practicing engineers, as well as students during all phases of their studies.        The first edition of the Springer Handbook of Mechanical Engineering was published in 2008 and was very well received by the mechanical engineering community worldwide. As early as 2015, the publication of an updated second edition of the handbook was discussed with Springer, based on suggestions from authors and readers to include new developments in mechanical engineering. The publication took some time to complete but we are now very happy to present the second edition.         We have been privileged to work with approximately 100 authors from all around the world to gather selected and useful information about the discipline. A unique aspect of this handbook is that it contains a lot of practical information and data that are the result of the many years of experiences of the authors. A lot of this information is not available in any other sources.       4  4) What is your contribution to publishing this book?  I have two contributions to this book. First, I, along with Prof. Karl Heinrich Grote from the Otto-von-Guericke University in Magdeburg, Germany are editors of the book. While the chapter authors are primarily responsible for the contents of each chapter, the role of the editors is to establish goals, set the standards and coordinate the content. We also make sure the information presented is useful, accurate and in line with the overall objective of the book.          My second contribution to this book was as a chapter author. I wrote Chapter 24 of the book on Aerospace Engineering. Aerospace Engineering is a close subset of the mechanical engineering discipline. The information in this chapter is based on my years of experience and includes a lot of information that is not available in any other sources.       5  5) Do you recommend this book to SUNY Korea students and why? Yes. This handbook is a valuable guide for all who design, develop, manufacture, operate, and use mechanical artefacts. Senior students can use it as a resource for their senior design or other projects.  The mathematics, mechanics and material sections are excellent resources for senior level and graduate students. The handbook can also provide valuable insight into various areas of mechanical engineering to students of other majors, such as technology management students.  They can gain an overview of technical areas without necessarily needing to understand the technical details that are presented.        6 6) Please add whatever you wish to say about the book or Mechanical Engineering in general.  Working with a large group of recognized experts in different fields of ME was a very rewarding experience. The wide range of expertise of the contributing authors solidified my appreciation of the discipline and it’s many contributions to improve life and address societal challenges in the past and for the future.           Like many other disciplines, the field of ME has been highly impacted by advancements in computing as well as new electronics, remote sensing, advanced diagnostics and AI technologies. These advancements allow ME to address new and complex areas of societal needs at realistic scales, which were not previously possible. I strongly urge students with interest and passion for creativity, problem solving and leadership skills to consider ME as a career option.

SUNY Korea FIT is having a fashion show and exhibition at the Songdo Hyundai Premium Outlet this Saturday! Please visit and see all the amazing works of our FIT students!     Date: June 5th, Saturday (10:30 ~ 19:00) Event Schedule:  1) Natural Dye Fashion Show (2 times): 13:30, 15:30       * location: 1st Floor (Garden Terrace)       - Title: Nostalgia       - Designer: FIT Fashion Design, 12 Students from NDGC (Natural Dye Garden Club)       - Fabric is made from Hanji (eco- friendly) provided by Hanwon Moolsan Corp      - Coiffirst (French Hair Salon) at the Hyundai Premium Outlet will         show Nolstalgic hairstyle     2) Exhibition of students’ works      * location: 1st Floor Gate 2     3) Natural Dye Workshop: 14:00, 16:00   * location: 1st Floor Gate 2     4) MSC (Merchandising Society Club) & IVY (I visualize You) pop-up booth       - Introduction of Fashion goods and Magazine     SUNY Korea admissions/promotion booth will be set up during this event: 10:30~ 18:00  * location: 1st Floor Gate 2     Admissions/promotion booth will provide opportunities to receive gifts and participate in events once you add SUNY Korea on Kakaotalk.  Also, if you have your high school student ID card, a limited number of special packages will be provided on a first-come first-served basis.   

SUNY Korea signed an MoU with the Incheon East Asia Global Education Institute (IEGI) on Friday May 28th. The areas of cooperation include collaboration in multilingual education and participation in international education programs, and exchange of information and mutual development of both organizations. After the signing ceremony, a campus tour was provided for the visitors. 

Hello! This is SUNY Korea Admissions.   Add our ‘SUNY Korea Admission’ Kakao Channel and get a chance to win a prize from ETS Korea!   This is a great opportunity to prepare for the SUNY Korea application and the TOEFL Test at the same time, so we encourage your participation.     - Event deadline: Friday, June 25th , 2021   - Target audience: Anyone who is interested in SUNY Korea   -  How: Add our ‘SUNY Korea Admission’ Kakao Channel and leave us a greeting message through the 1:1 chat.     -  Prizes: 2 TOEFL Vouchers, 4 Official Study Guides, TOEFL Sample Test Prep, etc.

SUNY Korea invites you to the Open House!   Join us to learn more about our programs and have a chat with admission counselors.     Schedule: Every other Thursday 15:00 – 17:00 KST (Korean:15:00 / English: 16:00)     Registration Link: https://apply.sunykorea.ac.kr/portal/admissions_events   You can view and choose which events to sign up for using the calendar at the bottom.       Inquiries: admission@sunykorea.ac.kr | 032 626 1030  | http://pf.kakao.com/_MPKHK

On May 18th, a campus visit by the Korea Overseas Study Association (KOSA) was held. KOSA is the only overseas study industry association in Korea, and it was established in 1980. 12 members of the Board of Directors of KOSA visited the campus of SUNY Korea and had a fruitful time discussing the academic curriculum and cooperative strategies. Additionally, Professor Jung Jae-man of FIT gave a special speech to introduce the academic curriculum of FIT. After that, through a campus tour, the facilities where students study were shown to the Board of Directors, who were visiting SUNY Korea for the first time. Kim Ki-dong, the Head of the KOSA Board members, said, “It was a great first step to many more discussions to come, and we are looking forward to it,” about the campus visit. This was the first official interaction between KOSA and SUNY Korea, so it was a great opportunity to discuss the future of SUNY Korea and the overseas study industry.

Forty students and two teachers from Incheon Songdo High School and forty seven students from Incheon Wondang High school visited SUNY Korea.   Provided for the visitors was a SUNY Korea Information Session and a Campus Tour.   Also, a special lecture on “Vision” by professor Terence Oliga was given to the students from Incheon Wondang High School.   We sincerely hope the visit to SUNY Korea provided insight and motivation to the high school students.